Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Monday, July 30, 2018

If You Think Cowboys Are A Symbol Of Racism And Sexism, You’re Ignorant

Cory Grewell

The University of Wyoming raised hackles with this fall’s new
advertising slogan: “The world needs more cowboys.” Perhaps not
surprising, the objection was to the use of the “stereotypical image of a cowboy” as an image identified with the university.
Faculty said the image is “racist, sexist and counterproductive to recruiting out of state students.”
The stereotypical cowboy, cultural specialist Darrell Hutchinson
argues, is nothing more than “a white man with a wide-brimmed hat riding
the range on horseback,” a la John Wayne or the Marlboro man. He’s a
symbol of white male machismo that doubtlessly reeks to the woke faculty
of toxic masculinity.
University spokesman Chad Baldwin
was quick to defend the slogan from accusations that it lacks the
requisite diversity, explaining, “Every time that slogan is used in any
of our materials, there will be an accompanying image or images that are
not the traditional idea of a cowboy. . . . That’s why this campaign
works — it’s the dissonance [emphasis mine] between the term ‘cowboy’ and the image that draws attention.”
According to Baldwin and other university officials, the ad campaign
seeks to redefine the image of the cowboy in order to make it more
inclusive. They want to bring the cowboy into the twenty-first century.
According to the promo video, the University of Wyoming’s cowboys “come
in every sex, shape, color, and creed.” The video shows scenes of
putative students and graduates painting, crunching numbers at a
whiteboard, conducting scientific research, skiing—basically engaging in
every vocation under the sun except moving cattle on horseback.
Essentially, the university’s defense of their slogan rests on
redefining the legendary image that gives birth to their mascot, a
redefinition that sells the traditional image of the cowboy downriver in
favor of a modern “cowboy” that tries to appease the politically
correct sensibilities of the faculty.
This defense strikes me as wrongheaded. Firstly, while Baldwin is
right to say that the modern image of the cowboy is much more diverse
than the university’s critics seem to think it is, the same could be
said of the traditional cowboy, who is much more than just a “white man
in a wide-brimmed hat.”
Secondly, and more importantly, it is actually within the cultural capital that surrounds the traditional
image of the cowboy—i.e., within the stereotype so aptly portrayed on
the silver screen by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood—that the university
should look to find the virtues, values, and ideals that they want to
instill in their students. There is more meaning in the cowboy
stereotype than university officials seem willing to own.

Dr. Grewell goes on to set the record straight on racism and sexism, and I like his comment on the "equal opportunity cowboy":

The faculty’s charge that cowboys lack diversity is particularly
ironic because, in the pantheon of Western culture’s heroes, the cowboy
is probably the least exclusive of them all. This is particularly so
along the lines of race, class, and sex that identity politics prizes so
much.The cowboy, is, for instance, just about the only lower-class hero in
Western mythos. Cowboys don’t come from the aristocracy... Virtually every other Western mythic hero has come from the upper
classes. Knights in shining armor in the Middle Ages were always
aristocrats, or related thereto. Greek and Roman heroes were kings and
patricians. Not so the cowboy. The cowboy is by definition salt of the
earth.

Dr. Grewell suggests these academics should "read more and whine less" and lays out his reasons why they should "celebrate cowboys, not tear them down."